Dave's latest effort, The Secret Ingredient, is probably the hardest to read of all his books, saving only The Code of Life, which he wrote in a combination of Navajo and a computer language he invented. But Ingredient isn't difficult because of its language—in fact, its fluid, jaunty English is eminently readable. What makes the book so difficult is what it leaves out. But perhaps that can't be explained until I set out what it includes.
The book follows Michael Taudré, an up-and-coming American chef who goes on a destructive drug- and alcohol-fueled bender in Lebanon and ultimately has to be rescued by American intelligence agents. Taudré is given a choice: he can be turned over to the Lebanese authorities to face the music, or he can work for the CIA. Taudré opts for the latter, and ends up at a "dark site" where prisoners are being held and interrogated.
At first Taudré is merely asked to make sure the prisoners get (barely) enough nutrition to survive, but after a few months of tedium, he proposes a new approach. Instead of the harsh interrogation techniques that the Americans have been using, he suggests "key ingredient torture," in which the prisoners' food is almost, but not quite, complete.
Taudré serves them pizza with no salt in the crust, tomato sauce with no garlic, and chocolate chip cookies with no chocolate chips. (At first, Taudré bakes chocolate chip cookies with raisins instead of chocolate chips, and when they realize his duplicity, the prisoners howl in anger and abject misery. But this proves to be too much even for the hardened CIA operatives at the site, and they secretly inform their commander. Their whistle-blowing is passed up the chain of command, and the administration quickly dispatches a human rights ombudsman who immediately puts a stop to the practice.)
The results are impressive. Food that is missing a key ingredient creates an "uncanny valley" effect, in which the prisoners are paradoxically tormented the closer the food gets to perfection, while still falling short. The intelligence flows, at first haltingly, and then in torrents. But the effect doesn't last, or at least, it doesn't keep working with the same foods. Taudré is forced to push his creations to a higher and higher level of culinary sophistication, while still omitting crucial ingredients. His gel of lamb and coriander is perfect—or at least it would be, if he included capers. His soufflé of duck and tarragon is better than anything he ever served in his restaurants—except that the dish is incomplete without slivered almonds on top. The prisoners, racked with deprivation, millimeters from culinary perfection, spill out their guts in a mad race for something, anything that can scratch the itch his preparations have left on their palates.
What the CIA doesn't realize is that this is all an elaborate charade. Once Taudré has moved past his early forays into saltless pizza crust, the food is actually perfectly delicious, and the prisoners are merely pretending to be tormented. The intelligence they are divulging is either untrue or is information that they don't mind the Americans having. The difficult part of the ruse is that the CIA agents insist on knowing which crucial ingredient Taudré is leaving out, which means he has to find a way to tell the prisoners which ingredient to lament the absence of. Ordinarily he simply blinks in Morse code, but on occasion the prisoner is blindfolded. Then Taudré has to find a way to lead the prisoner to the right ingredient without tipping his hand to the CIA—these are the funniest scenes in the book, as Taudré comes up with outrageous ways to hint at the missing ingredient. ("Do you find anything... faulty in the salad dressing?" he asks, referencing Basil Fawlty, John Cleese's character in the highly regarded British TV comedy Fawlty Towers.)
But who is conning whom? As the prisoners come to respect Taudré and appreciate his Herculean efforts to protect them, they come to feel remorse for their earlier anti-American actions, and they genuinely want to give the Americans the information they need to shut down violent terrorist operations around the world. Were the CIA agents really taken in by Taudré's machinations? Or were they manipulating him and the prisoners all along?
Dave must know that this fantasy is hard to swallow. The reality is that every day, the American government tortures an unknown number of people around the globe, many of whom are probably innocent of any wrongdoing, or hands them over to odious regimes that do our bidding in exchange for military support. The book never addresses this tension head on, it simply builds a fantasy world that is so perversely cartoonish and soft-edged that it forces our minds back onto the reality of American torture. There are times, reading the book, when I couldn't stop laughing, and then suddenly I couldn't stop crying. It's a beautiful world that Dave has built, but its impossibility makes it a painful thing to contemplate—really, it makes it an obscenity, like an impressionist painting of a concentration camp. But maybe in these dark days a little obscenity is what is called for.
Thursday, November 27, 2014
Sunday, November 23, 2014
Sarang's Sua Sponte
Sarang's latest effort, Sua Sponte, marks something of a comeback for the reclusive novelist. Critics savaged his previous novel, Without Wax, and the drubbing was so severe that some doubted he would ever write again. Personally I think the critical reaction was unfair. The novel was ambitious and perhaps a bit smug, but it didn't deserve the almost universal opprobrium it received. To put it into context, there had recently been a spate of novels featuring unreliable narrators, an approach the critics rightly bemoaned as tired and tiring. Nevertheless, the critics were not amused when Sarang, by way of parody, introduced a hyper-reliable narrator, a tax professional who not only recounted the weather and headlines with complete fidelity, but who also divulged his "real" phone number. Dial that number, and you would be connected to one of several dozen actors Sarang hired to help you with your personal issues while staying "in character" as the narrator. The critics called this level of narratorial reliability a "stunt" and a "gimmick," though this didn't prevent them from dialing the number when tax season came around.
Sua Sponte could also be called a gimmick of sorts, but it is a very different kind of book. Sarang took his inspiration from the true story of a judge who presided over a rape trial that resulted in a wrongful conviction. Although the defendant was freed years later, his life was ruined, and he was picked up on drug charges. Recognizing the defendant, the judge dismissed all charges immediately, to the consternation of the prosecutors.
The only element that links the 12 stories in Sua Sponte is that in each story, a character appears before the same judge twice. A bankruptcy judge urges a chapter 7 debtor to think twice before reaffirming his debt (a process in which someone entitled to discharge his debt nevertheless voluntarily incurs the legal obligation to repay it). But the debtor can't be dissuaded, and a decade later, the same debtor is back before the court, never having escaped the debt burden from his prior reaffirmation.
By the time you have read two or three stories, you find yourself spending a lot of time trying to predict what will bring about the second judicial encounter. One story starts with an acrimonious divorce, and I found myself wondering where it would end—perhaps with a murder trial? In fact that story ends happily, with the same judge presiding over the remarriage of the couple.
The final story in Sua Sponte opens with an emotionally charged courtroom scene. A man has had sex with a mentally disabled young woman, and the prosecutors are seeking a rape conviction on the grounds that she can't consent. But she did consent, the alleged victim insists. She wanted to do it, and she is an adult. The woman's parents are outraged the judge is even allowing this testimony, but the judge hears her out.
Eventually, the defense attorney successfully argues that his client (who is also mentally disabled) didn't commit a crime, but after the acquittal we wait in torment for the hammer to drop. Which character will end up back in criminal court, and why? Manipulative, maybe, but there's a term for manipulating emotions as well as Sarang does: great writing.
Sua Sponte could also be called a gimmick of sorts, but it is a very different kind of book. Sarang took his inspiration from the true story of a judge who presided over a rape trial that resulted in a wrongful conviction. Although the defendant was freed years later, his life was ruined, and he was picked up on drug charges. Recognizing the defendant, the judge dismissed all charges immediately, to the consternation of the prosecutors.
The only element that links the 12 stories in Sua Sponte is that in each story, a character appears before the same judge twice. A bankruptcy judge urges a chapter 7 debtor to think twice before reaffirming his debt (a process in which someone entitled to discharge his debt nevertheless voluntarily incurs the legal obligation to repay it). But the debtor can't be dissuaded, and a decade later, the same debtor is back before the court, never having escaped the debt burden from his prior reaffirmation.
By the time you have read two or three stories, you find yourself spending a lot of time trying to predict what will bring about the second judicial encounter. One story starts with an acrimonious divorce, and I found myself wondering where it would end—perhaps with a murder trial? In fact that story ends happily, with the same judge presiding over the remarriage of the couple.
The final story in Sua Sponte opens with an emotionally charged courtroom scene. A man has had sex with a mentally disabled young woman, and the prosecutors are seeking a rape conviction on the grounds that she can't consent. But she did consent, the alleged victim insists. She wanted to do it, and she is an adult. The woman's parents are outraged the judge is even allowing this testimony, but the judge hears her out.
Eventually, the defense attorney successfully argues that his client (who is also mentally disabled) didn't commit a crime, but after the acquittal we wait in torment for the hammer to drop. Which character will end up back in criminal court, and why? Manipulative, maybe, but there's a term for manipulating emotions as well as Sarang does: great writing.
Saturday, November 1, 2014
The Literary Feud of the Century
What is it about literary feuds that fascinates us so much? Is there something about the high/low dynamic that thrills us, that gives us a frisson of shock in an otherwise staid corner of the world? Or is it just a chance to see our intellectual heroes from a new and not-necessarily-flattering angle?
Whatever the reason, the explosion of the long-simmering Dave/Sarang feud into public view has captivated the press, with the New York Review of Books calling it "the summer blockbuster for people who don't like summer blockbusters" and the New York Post blaring: "LIT SNIT PITS WIT AGAINST WIT; CRITS HAVE FITS." (This is not the duo's first encounter with the tabloid: after the Post published pictures of Sarang holding court at his new clothing-optional nightclub, Dave suggested the headline "BRAINLESS MAN IN TOPLESS BAR.")
In truth, though, the brawls have been more salacious than edifying. The latest flare-up started when Sarang ordered a "Dave's literary career" at the Algonquin. When the bartender admitted he didn't know the recipe, Sarang responded that he didn't either, but he knew it was on the rocks. Unfortunately, the famous "battle of wits" that resulted was a bit too literal for most people's taste: Dave threw a wit beer in Sarang's face, and Sarang responded in kind.
It seems to be one of those cases in which the viciousness of the fight is exacerbated by the closeness of the combatants' views. In fact, if anything Dave and Sarang have been allies in most of the big literary and political debates of the last two decades. They both defended Ian McEwan against Alice Munro; they were both outraged when the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's algorithmic novel This Sun of York was blackballed by the Pulitzer committee; they both wrote novels illustrating the folly of placing the school lunch program within the Department of Agriculture. Both men signed the St. Louis Manifesto.
Perhaps a rapprochement is on the horizon. However grudgingly, Dave has admitted that Sarang's latest effort, Actually, Paris Is Significantly Farther North Than Montreal, breaks new ground in experimental "obnoxious fiction." And when he was recently asked to name the 21st century's "biggest intellectual culprits," Sarang declined to name Dave, instead focusing heavily on the Polish literary establishment. At any rate, the men now have a common enemy: Richard Flanagan, whose The Narrow Road to the Deep North edged out Sarang and Dave for 2014's Man Booker prize, the first one for which both men were eligible. There's blood in the water.
Whatever the reason, the explosion of the long-simmering Dave/Sarang feud into public view has captivated the press, with the New York Review of Books calling it "the summer blockbuster for people who don't like summer blockbusters" and the New York Post blaring: "LIT SNIT PITS WIT AGAINST WIT; CRITS HAVE FITS." (This is not the duo's first encounter with the tabloid: after the Post published pictures of Sarang holding court at his new clothing-optional nightclub, Dave suggested the headline "BRAINLESS MAN IN TOPLESS BAR.")
In truth, though, the brawls have been more salacious than edifying. The latest flare-up started when Sarang ordered a "Dave's literary career" at the Algonquin. When the bartender admitted he didn't know the recipe, Sarang responded that he didn't either, but he knew it was on the rocks. Unfortunately, the famous "battle of wits" that resulted was a bit too literal for most people's taste: Dave threw a wit beer in Sarang's face, and Sarang responded in kind.
It seems to be one of those cases in which the viciousness of the fight is exacerbated by the closeness of the combatants' views. In fact, if anything Dave and Sarang have been allies in most of the big literary and political debates of the last two decades. They both defended Ian McEwan against Alice Munro; they were both outraged when the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's algorithmic novel This Sun of York was blackballed by the Pulitzer committee; they both wrote novels illustrating the folly of placing the school lunch program within the Department of Agriculture. Both men signed the St. Louis Manifesto.
Perhaps a rapprochement is on the horizon. However grudgingly, Dave has admitted that Sarang's latest effort, Actually, Paris Is Significantly Farther North Than Montreal, breaks new ground in experimental "obnoxious fiction." And when he was recently asked to name the 21st century's "biggest intellectual culprits," Sarang declined to name Dave, instead focusing heavily on the Polish literary establishment. At any rate, the men now have a common enemy: Richard Flanagan, whose The Narrow Road to the Deep North edged out Sarang and Dave for 2014's Man Booker prize, the first one for which both men were eligible. There's blood in the water.
Sarang's Tomorrow Darling
Sarang's latest effort, Tomorrow Darling, has been called "a penetrating examination of the human spirit in the form of an astonishingly good mystery story" (J.M. Coetzee), "at once a love letter to the mystery genre and its high-water-mark" (Michael Ondaatje), and "the book I wish I'd written" (Dan Brown). It has also been called "warmed-over tripe" (Michiko Kakutani) and "an unappetizing pastiche of Poe, Christie, and Conan Doyle" (Kirkus Reviews). So it is fair to say that the book is polarizing. But most would acknowledge that it is a welcome departure from Sarang's previous forays into the mystery genre, in which the culprits turned out to be, respectively, the subprime mortgage market; capitalism, and in particular its emphasis on exchange value instead of use value; and "man's inhumanity to man." Darling, at least, has a flesh-and-blood murderer (or murderers).
Set in the Cotswolds in the twilight years of the Victorian era, the novel follows amateur detective Cecil Overby-Smythe on a visit to the country estate of the Barrington family. The patriarch, William, is in poor health, aggravated in recent weeks by news of potentially disastrous financial setbacks in his large industrial concerns in North America. And his family seems to be disintegrating. His somewhat erratic daughter Delia has become increasingly radical and politically active (particularly on the question of Home Rule). His older son Reginald has accepted a quasi-permanent post in India. His younger son David has married a Methodist. William has summoned the whole family to the manor for some unspecified purpose, and Overby-Smythe has joined the fractious gathering in the company of his longtime friend, George MacBride, the family solicitor. (The witty if occasionally bitchy repartee between Overby-Smythe and MacBride is one of the chief pleasures of the book.)
On the morning after he arrives, Overby-Smythe goes for a stroll, braving the sullen rain, in search of mud to eat (he suffers from what today would be diagnosed as pica). From behind a coppice of willows, Overby-Smythe witnesses a mustachioed man in a brown suit and bowler hat somberly handing a sheaf of papers to a woman in a green dress, whose features Overby-Smythe cannot quite make out. When a woman's body is found later that day, apparently poisoned, Overby-Smythe feels bound to get to the bottom of the case. (I won't reveal who the victim is, or whether she is the same woman Overby-Smythe witnessed on his walk, since for a time the reader is kept in the dark on this latter point. Suffice it to say that a careful reader can piece quite a bit together from the seemingly innocuous details that Sarang weaves into his rich description of the English countryside.)
Darling is refreshingly traditional. It bears far more resemblance to The Woman in White than it does to Banville's Quirke books (which are published under the pseudonym Benjamin Black and which have recently been turned into a television series starring Gabriel Byrne). In short, if a literary writer like Sarang or Banville is going to spend time "slumming" in genre fiction, it is an exercise in self-indulgence unless he is willing to commit. Banville's books barely qualify as mysteries, whereas Darling is delightfully true to the genre, from the opening scene right down through the climax, in which Overby-Smythe, munching on splinters of wood, reveals the identity of the guilty party (or parties) to the rapt audience.
So while the book definitely doesn't transcend the genre, or even much modify its time-honored formulas, it is gratifyingly rich in all of the things that make the genre so irresistible in the first place, and if you can put the book down during its last 50 pages, then you're a better man than I.
Set in the Cotswolds in the twilight years of the Victorian era, the novel follows amateur detective Cecil Overby-Smythe on a visit to the country estate of the Barrington family. The patriarch, William, is in poor health, aggravated in recent weeks by news of potentially disastrous financial setbacks in his large industrial concerns in North America. And his family seems to be disintegrating. His somewhat erratic daughter Delia has become increasingly radical and politically active (particularly on the question of Home Rule). His older son Reginald has accepted a quasi-permanent post in India. His younger son David has married a Methodist. William has summoned the whole family to the manor for some unspecified purpose, and Overby-Smythe has joined the fractious gathering in the company of his longtime friend, George MacBride, the family solicitor. (The witty if occasionally bitchy repartee between Overby-Smythe and MacBride is one of the chief pleasures of the book.)
On the morning after he arrives, Overby-Smythe goes for a stroll, braving the sullen rain, in search of mud to eat (he suffers from what today would be diagnosed as pica). From behind a coppice of willows, Overby-Smythe witnesses a mustachioed man in a brown suit and bowler hat somberly handing a sheaf of papers to a woman in a green dress, whose features Overby-Smythe cannot quite make out. When a woman's body is found later that day, apparently poisoned, Overby-Smythe feels bound to get to the bottom of the case. (I won't reveal who the victim is, or whether she is the same woman Overby-Smythe witnessed on his walk, since for a time the reader is kept in the dark on this latter point. Suffice it to say that a careful reader can piece quite a bit together from the seemingly innocuous details that Sarang weaves into his rich description of the English countryside.)
Darling is refreshingly traditional. It bears far more resemblance to The Woman in White than it does to Banville's Quirke books (which are published under the pseudonym Benjamin Black and which have recently been turned into a television series starring Gabriel Byrne). In short, if a literary writer like Sarang or Banville is going to spend time "slumming" in genre fiction, it is an exercise in self-indulgence unless he is willing to commit. Banville's books barely qualify as mysteries, whereas Darling is delightfully true to the genre, from the opening scene right down through the climax, in which Overby-Smythe, munching on splinters of wood, reveals the identity of the guilty party (or parties) to the rapt audience.
So while the book definitely doesn't transcend the genre, or even much modify its time-honored formulas, it is gratifyingly rich in all of the things that make the genre so irresistible in the first place, and if you can put the book down during its last 50 pages, then you're a better man than I.
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
Seyong Jo's "Let's Dance"
"Let's Dance," by Seyong Jo,* is essentially a stylized documentary about abortion in Korea. The movie includes fictionalized scenes, as in the beginning of the preview below, but the heart of the movie is a series of interviews with women who have undergone abortions in Korea.
The interviews are powerful. Their strength comes from the startling openness and honesty of the women, who tell their stories in a a plain, straightforward way that nevertheless manages to be tremendously moving. Although we don't hear the questions, the interviewer (Jo, I assume) clearly handled the interviews with considerable skill, reminiscent of Errol Morris.
The movie is refreshingly free of Michael Moore-style propaganda. It depicts a demonstration against abortion, and also shows oral argument before the Supreme Court of Korea in a landmark case in which the court declined to overrule the country's anti-abortion statute. But the movie never engages in polemics, instead letting the women speak for themselves. The result is nuanced and complex, and leaves room for doubt and contradiction. One woman holds a memorial service for her terminated child.
After the movie there was a brief Q&A session with Jo. She said (through a translator) that there are cultural differences between Korea and the United States. For instance, at one point in the movie, Korean women tend to start crying, but in America that wasn't the case. I decided not to speak up, but in truth I cried too. Some things are universal.
* "Seyong Jo" is how her name is spelled on the website of the Chelsea Film Festival. I have also seen it spelled "Se-young Jo" and "Se-yong Jo." My understanding is that "Jo" is her family name and "Seyong" is her given name, which is why I refer to her as "Jo" in this review.
The interviews are powerful. Their strength comes from the startling openness and honesty of the women, who tell their stories in a a plain, straightforward way that nevertheless manages to be tremendously moving. Although we don't hear the questions, the interviewer (Jo, I assume) clearly handled the interviews with considerable skill, reminiscent of Errol Morris.
The movie is refreshingly free of Michael Moore-style propaganda. It depicts a demonstration against abortion, and also shows oral argument before the Supreme Court of Korea in a landmark case in which the court declined to overrule the country's anti-abortion statute. But the movie never engages in polemics, instead letting the women speak for themselves. The result is nuanced and complex, and leaves room for doubt and contradiction. One woman holds a memorial service for her terminated child.
After the movie there was a brief Q&A session with Jo. She said (through a translator) that there are cultural differences between Korea and the United States. For instance, at one point in the movie, Korean women tend to start crying, but in America that wasn't the case. I decided not to speak up, but in truth I cried too. Some things are universal.
* "Seyong Jo" is how her name is spelled on the website of the Chelsea Film Festival. I have also seen it spelled "Se-young Jo" and "Se-yong Jo." My understanding is that "Jo" is her family name and "Seyong" is her given name, which is why I refer to her as "Jo" in this review.
Friday, October 17, 2014
Dave's Do I Dare Disturb the Universe?
Dave's latest effort, Worse Than A Crime (which we recently reviewed), is perhaps the clearest example of "wishful fiction," the genre that Dave and Sarang developed in a hash-fueled overnight session when the two crashed the 2012 Pulitzers (recall that in 2012, the prize board, deadlocked, didn't award the Pulitzer for fiction to either Dave or Sarang). But in all truth, Crime is a relatively straightforward, almost obvious application of the approach. More interesting, I think, is Dave's 2013 novella Do I Dare Disturb the Universe?. The book imagines a not-so-far-fetched near-future in which Congressional politics have become so dysfunctional that it is impossible to pass traditional legislation. Instead, Congress votes on general statements of policy, which are then translated into law by an advanced computer algorithm. The change is of course highly disruptive, but as legislation starts moving again, after a long freeze, an uneasy equilibrium emerges.
But all hell breaks loose when a hurricane inflicts severe damage on Houston and incapacitates a large amount of the nation's oil infrastructure. Congress, swept up in the national outrage over the resulting economic slowdown, passes a resolution declaring that the U.S. should spend "whatever it takes to secure the most crucial natural resource in the greatest country on the face of the earth." The measure passes unanimously and is hugely popular . . . until it comes time to translate the policy into statutory law. The legislative computer carefully assesses the Congressional resolution and allocates $175 billion to fund maple syrup infrastructure in Canada.
Leaders of both parties are in a bind. On one hand, the measure is hugely unpopular, since most Americans had assumed the funds would be used to strengthen the petroleum industry in the U.S. On the other hand, no one wants to acknowledge any flaw in the drafting of the Congressional resolution (which literally every member of Congress voted for), and no one can afford to be seen as anti-science by suggesting that the computer misconstrued the legislation. (When the Republican governor of Texas suggests that the computer program should be tweaked and re-run, Neil deGrasse Tyson slams him for injecting politics into the scientific method. "If you change algorithms every time you don't like the results, then you're doing politics, not science," the astronomer points out. The governor quickly backs down.)
The problem is not just political and technological, though. A debate breaks out as to what it means for "the greatest country on the face of the earth" to refer to one nation or another. How does a phrase "reach out" into the world and "attach" to a particular entity? Can reference be fixed by some sort of objective rule? Is a causal chain necessary? Could, for instance, an accidental blotch of paint refer to a tree that it happens to resemble? Does it matter in what causal relation the viewer stands with the tree? And what is causation, anyway?
Disturb the Universe thus becomes much more philosophical than Crime, and because of the way the plot unfolds it does not fit comfortably within "wishful fiction." But for exactly that reason, it is a bolder and more profound exploration of the genre's outer bounds than any of Dave's other books, and it is also a cri de coeur, the opening salvo in Dave's passionate argument for the ongoing relevance of philosophy. The future of the country may not be at stake—yet. But the future of philosophy and the public intellectual is very much in play, and Disturb the Universe is right in the middle of it.
But all hell breaks loose when a hurricane inflicts severe damage on Houston and incapacitates a large amount of the nation's oil infrastructure. Congress, swept up in the national outrage over the resulting economic slowdown, passes a resolution declaring that the U.S. should spend "whatever it takes to secure the most crucial natural resource in the greatest country on the face of the earth." The measure passes unanimously and is hugely popular . . . until it comes time to translate the policy into statutory law. The legislative computer carefully assesses the Congressional resolution and allocates $175 billion to fund maple syrup infrastructure in Canada.
Leaders of both parties are in a bind. On one hand, the measure is hugely unpopular, since most Americans had assumed the funds would be used to strengthen the petroleum industry in the U.S. On the other hand, no one wants to acknowledge any flaw in the drafting of the Congressional resolution (which literally every member of Congress voted for), and no one can afford to be seen as anti-science by suggesting that the computer misconstrued the legislation. (When the Republican governor of Texas suggests that the computer program should be tweaked and re-run, Neil deGrasse Tyson slams him for injecting politics into the scientific method. "If you change algorithms every time you don't like the results, then you're doing politics, not science," the astronomer points out. The governor quickly backs down.)
The problem is not just political and technological, though. A debate breaks out as to what it means for "the greatest country on the face of the earth" to refer to one nation or another. How does a phrase "reach out" into the world and "attach" to a particular entity? Can reference be fixed by some sort of objective rule? Is a causal chain necessary? Could, for instance, an accidental blotch of paint refer to a tree that it happens to resemble? Does it matter in what causal relation the viewer stands with the tree? And what is causation, anyway?
Disturb the Universe thus becomes much more philosophical than Crime, and because of the way the plot unfolds it does not fit comfortably within "wishful fiction." But for exactly that reason, it is a bolder and more profound exploration of the genre's outer bounds than any of Dave's other books, and it is also a cri de coeur, the opening salvo in Dave's passionate argument for the ongoing relevance of philosophy. The future of the country may not be at stake—yet. But the future of philosophy and the public intellectual is very much in play, and Disturb the Universe is right in the middle of it.
Thursday, October 16, 2014
Dave's Worse Than a Crime
Dave's latest effort, Worse Than A Crime,
can perhaps best be described as utopian political satire. The novel
opens bluntly, describing a press conference given by Secretary of State
John Kerry while on a visit to Japan. A college student asks Secretary
Kerry how the U.S. can justify its huge military budget while billions
of people lack access to clean drinking water. Kerry briefly hems and
haws before settling on a clever response: the U.S. would happily cut
its defense budget by 10% if China and Russia were willing to match the
cuts. "And we could spend the money on clean water, living wages, free
ponies for everyone—whatever you'd like!" Kerry smirks, before moving on
to the next question.
But Kerry's ordeal is far from over. China and Russia almost immediately accept Kerry's "offer," putting Kerry in the difficult (but by now familiar) position of having made policy while trying to make a reductio ad absurdum. To make matters worse, China and Russia don't equivocate: each of them immediately slashes its military budget by more than 10% and launches an ambitious program of financial aid and technical support. The countries jointly declare that the true measure of a country's economic, technical, and administrative capacity (as well as diplomatic clout) is its ability to eliminate waterborne diseases wherever it chooses to do so. Providing clean drinking water thus becomes not just a humanitarian project but an arms race of epic proportions, with the U.S.'s status as the sole superpower hanging in the balance.
Dave is careful not to portray the resulting flood of money into clean-water infrastructure as an entirely positive development. The U.S. is forced to twist elbows, and worse, in its diplomatic effort to get the job done. When Bangladesh refuses to allow outside contractors to bid for key infrastructure jobs, the U.S. threatens to take away the Bangladeshi military's lucrative peacekeeping contract with the United Nations, nearly instigating a coup. Meanwhile China uses southeast Asia's lingering resentment against Japan to stir up nationalist fervor, hoping to channel it into political support for massive water projects. The results are, unsurprisingly, not exactly what China intended, and soon Japan abandons its longstanding neutrality and plows headlong into the global clean-water arms race. Great Britain can't long resist joining the fight, especially when France announces that all of its former colonies will have clean drinking water long before Britain's. Germany, while not directly participating in the struggle, deploys a vast fleet of u-boats that help install undersea pipes and cables for coastal cities such as Lagos and Manila.
Before long, old resentments resurface, and countries across Asia, Africa, and Latin America are forced to pick sides in an increasingly acrimonious "cold peace." Developing countries shrewdly play the great powers against each other, demanding not just physical infrastructure but large-scale social and economic changes that will make it possible to deliver clean, affordable drinking water in a sustainable manner without further assistance. The results are devastating to the world's water-borne pathogens, which are the true victims of the superpowers' insatiable zeal.
Worse Than A Crime subtly suggests that, even as vast resources are devoted to clean water and other public health initiatives in a mad game of geopolitical one-upmanship, the real madness is that this didn't happen sooner. If the world depicted by the novel is not an entirely realistic one, the moral question that Dave presents is no less urgent: just what, exactly, will it take for technology developed in the 19th century to become available to all humans who live on this earth? Just when, exactly, will the last person die of cholera, an eminently preventable disease? And why should we tolerate any delay whatsoever?
But Kerry's ordeal is far from over. China and Russia almost immediately accept Kerry's "offer," putting Kerry in the difficult (but by now familiar) position of having made policy while trying to make a reductio ad absurdum. To make matters worse, China and Russia don't equivocate: each of them immediately slashes its military budget by more than 10% and launches an ambitious program of financial aid and technical support. The countries jointly declare that the true measure of a country's economic, technical, and administrative capacity (as well as diplomatic clout) is its ability to eliminate waterborne diseases wherever it chooses to do so. Providing clean drinking water thus becomes not just a humanitarian project but an arms race of epic proportions, with the U.S.'s status as the sole superpower hanging in the balance.
Dave is careful not to portray the resulting flood of money into clean-water infrastructure as an entirely positive development. The U.S. is forced to twist elbows, and worse, in its diplomatic effort to get the job done. When Bangladesh refuses to allow outside contractors to bid for key infrastructure jobs, the U.S. threatens to take away the Bangladeshi military's lucrative peacekeeping contract with the United Nations, nearly instigating a coup. Meanwhile China uses southeast Asia's lingering resentment against Japan to stir up nationalist fervor, hoping to channel it into political support for massive water projects. The results are, unsurprisingly, not exactly what China intended, and soon Japan abandons its longstanding neutrality and plows headlong into the global clean-water arms race. Great Britain can't long resist joining the fight, especially when France announces that all of its former colonies will have clean drinking water long before Britain's. Germany, while not directly participating in the struggle, deploys a vast fleet of u-boats that help install undersea pipes and cables for coastal cities such as Lagos and Manila.
Before long, old resentments resurface, and countries across Asia, Africa, and Latin America are forced to pick sides in an increasingly acrimonious "cold peace." Developing countries shrewdly play the great powers against each other, demanding not just physical infrastructure but large-scale social and economic changes that will make it possible to deliver clean, affordable drinking water in a sustainable manner without further assistance. The results are devastating to the world's water-borne pathogens, which are the true victims of the superpowers' insatiable zeal.
Worse Than A Crime subtly suggests that, even as vast resources are devoted to clean water and other public health initiatives in a mad game of geopolitical one-upmanship, the real madness is that this didn't happen sooner. If the world depicted by the novel is not an entirely realistic one, the moral question that Dave presents is no less urgent: just what, exactly, will it take for technology developed in the 19th century to become available to all humans who live on this earth? Just when, exactly, will the last person die of cholera, an eminently preventable disease? And why should we tolerate any delay whatsoever?
Sunday, October 12, 2014
Dave's Tara Incognita
Dave's latest effort, Tara Incognita, applies his technique of "narrative parallax" to the Civil War novel The Wind Done Gone, the debut novel of country-music songwriter Alice Randall. To appreciate the nuances of Dave's technique, you would probably have to read his manifesto, "Math and Literature: Two Great Tastes that Taste Great Together." In short, narrative parallax is not merely the re-telling of a story from another perspective. Instead, it involves recasting events in such a way that the story sheds light on "the fabric of reality itself." In other words, while the "reference story" may have a conventional focus on plot, character, etc. ("the thing itself"), the "perspectivally shifted recapitulation" directs the reader's attention to the subtle differences and contradictions that emerge when the story is retold ("what comes between"). "The simplest way to put it," Dave writes, "is that it is the difference between using trigonometry to calculate the height of a tree, and using trigonometry to calculate your own location. We've seen the tree, we've thought about the tree, frankly we are bored by the tree; but what can the tree, together with our quantitative methods, teach us about ourselves? And about our place in the universe?"
But you don't need to be steeped in Dave's somewhat convoluted literary theory to appreciate Tara Incognita. The Wind Done Gone, which serves as Dave's "reference story," is narrated by a recently-freed slave in the deep South named Cynara. Dave re-tells the story from the perspective of Scarlett, Cynara's white half-sister. The book itself is masterful, almost disturbingly so. Scarlett is rendered vividly and arrestingly, and her triumphs, setbacks, and constant maneuvering are endlessly fascinating. And yet the story, however delicious, is hard to swallow. As Scarlett enters the foreground, her family's slaves are simplified, depersonalized, and pushed to the margins. The book is a self-conscious exercise in privilege and racism. So what does it say about me that I loved Tara Incognita and couldn't put it down? What does it say about our society that Tara Incognita is a bestseller and has become far better-known than The Wind Done Gone? And that the book is about to be made into an epic movie (with Dave taking his first-ever screenwriting credit) that is expected to be one of the highest-grossing films of all time (in inflation-adjusted terms, at least)?
Whatever the broader social and literary implications of the book, Randall apparently does not appreciate Dave's implicit commentary on her work. She has sued Dave and his publisher (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), though most legal experts think that Dave has a solid First Amendment argument that his book is a parody. I hope the matter can be settled amicably, because I think the writers have a lot to say to each other and to the rest of us about the subtle and not-so-subtle ways in which our legacy of racism distorts our perspective. The sooner they can resolve their differences, the sooner the dialogue can start.
But you don't need to be steeped in Dave's somewhat convoluted literary theory to appreciate Tara Incognita. The Wind Done Gone, which serves as Dave's "reference story," is narrated by a recently-freed slave in the deep South named Cynara. Dave re-tells the story from the perspective of Scarlett, Cynara's white half-sister. The book itself is masterful, almost disturbingly so. Scarlett is rendered vividly and arrestingly, and her triumphs, setbacks, and constant maneuvering are endlessly fascinating. And yet the story, however delicious, is hard to swallow. As Scarlett enters the foreground, her family's slaves are simplified, depersonalized, and pushed to the margins. The book is a self-conscious exercise in privilege and racism. So what does it say about me that I loved Tara Incognita and couldn't put it down? What does it say about our society that Tara Incognita is a bestseller and has become far better-known than The Wind Done Gone? And that the book is about to be made into an epic movie (with Dave taking his first-ever screenwriting credit) that is expected to be one of the highest-grossing films of all time (in inflation-adjusted terms, at least)?
Whatever the broader social and literary implications of the book, Randall apparently does not appreciate Dave's implicit commentary on her work. She has sued Dave and his publisher (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), though most legal experts think that Dave has a solid First Amendment argument that his book is a parody. I hope the matter can be settled amicably, because I think the writers have a lot to say to each other and to the rest of us about the subtle and not-so-subtle ways in which our legacy of racism distorts our perspective. The sooner they can resolve their differences, the sooner the dialogue can start.
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